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The developers conference for Dropbox this summer may not be as big a deal as the Consumer Electronics Show in La Vegas, Mobile World Congress in Barcelona or Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, but the growing cloud storage company, which has been angling for a bigger share of the business user pie amid competition from Google's Drive and Microsoft's SkyDrive, clearly hopes it will more firmly establish the company on the map.

Sharing Ideas with Engineers

"At DBX, you'll meet fellow developers, see the great things they're building, and share ideas with the engineers and designers working on Dropbox's API," the company said in a blog post Monday. "But most importantly, you'll be the first to learn about new products that will make developing on Dropbox even easier."

The conference is planned for Tuesday, July 9, at Fort Mason in the company's home town of San Francisco. Interested developers can request an invitation at Dropbox.com. If you get one (seating is limited), be prepared to shell out $350.

As we reported last month, Dropbox has launched Dropbox for Business with a system that allows users to sign in once with an identity profile and access all their applications. An earlier addition added an administrative sharing console allowing easier control for collaborators to share effortlessly.

The company was founded in 2007 and was estimated by research firm iSuppli's Mobile and Wireless Communications Service to have 100 million users last year, which constitutes 20 percent of the world's current half-billion cloud subscriptions as the industry continues to soar. Dropbox for Teams, which paved the way for the business segment, launched in 2011, starting at $795 for up to five users with unlimited storage.

Developer conferences are a great way for companies to show their human face to the public while developing partnerships with emerging talent. Next week, Google will hold its annual I/O (input-output) event at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The widely attended event is an opportunity for the company to give away hardware to developers, such as its Nexus 7 tablet and Samsung Chromebox computer last year, as well as unveil the latest version of its Android operating system. And Apple's WWDC kicks off June 10-14, also in San Francisco.

Is It too Soon?

Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, said the event isn't necessarily intended to put the company on the map in terms of the tech events calendar, but is an opportunity to create new ventures.

"Generally speaking, vendors have to be 'on the map' before launching an event like this or they risk having a party no one attends," King told us. "That said, when they're successful, developer and partner events can measurably raise a company's profile among desirable audiences."